John Wesley was writing to a Scottish woman about the trials of Methodists and the failures of Methodist preachers in and around Edinburgh. Wesley attributed the problems to the work of ministers and preachers who opposed the Methodist doctrines.
If any one could show you, by plain Scripture and reason, a more excellent way than that you have received, you certainly would do well to receive it; and, I trust, I should do the same. But I think it will not be easy for any one to show us, either that Christ did not die for all, or that he is not willing as well as able to cleanse from all sin, even in the present world. If your steady adherence to these great truths be termed bigotry, yet you have no need to be ashamed. You are reproached for Christ’s sake, and the Spirit of glory and of Christ shall rest upon you.
These two points of doctrine I find Wesley defending throughout his ministry. This letter from 1771 stakes out the same ground that the much younger Wesley often defended.
Jesus Christ died for all people, not just the elect. Therefore, salvation is open to all. No one has been predestined out of grace.
God can remove all sin from us in this life. We do not have to wait for heaven or the edge of death for this gift of grace. In this life, we can be perfected in love of God and neighbor. We can love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as ourself.
In my own pastoral work, I find the second doctrine — perfection — still as controversial as it was in Wesley’s day. Few I encounter would deny that grace is free for all, but many deny strongly that perfection in love is possible. They say, “I am not perfect. I never will be perfect.”
This is, in part, the same problem with the meaning of words that Wesley struggled with. In every extended discourse on perfection I’ve read, Wesley was at pains to distinguish the difference between perfection in love and more general notion of being a perfect person. He always had to explain that even the perfected saints were and are subject to errors, mistakes, and other limitations of life in this body of flesh.
But, even so, what I detect in the response of people I meet is a resignation to sin. There is some comfort in the notion. If I can never escape sin, then perhaps I do not have to strive so hard to resist it. But it is more than that. We do not preach perfection, so people do not imagine it is possible. We do not know many — or any — examples of those who have been granted perfection in love, so we have few models. Our optimism about the power of grace extends only so far.
Wesley believed Scripture and reason (as opposed to tradition, I wonder?) taught that God promised to cleanse us of all sin. He believed that what God promises God can and will do.
There is no doubt that this doctrine is an essential teaching of Wesley, but it is not — and has not been — an essential teaching of United Methodists.
I wonder where, then, Wesley was wrong in his reading of Scripture and in his thinking. By what Scripture and plain reasoning do we consider him to have been on the wrong path for so much of his ministry? How can we correct his flaws?
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
